


A Better Version of Me

by Talkative (GCLane)



Category: The Office (US)
Genre: F/M, Jewish Character, New York City, Summer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-22
Updated: 2021-01-22
Packaged: 2021-03-14 06:42:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28916286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GCLane/pseuds/Talkative
Summary: "Oh, mister, wait until you see/What I'm gonna be/I've got a plan, a demand and it just began/And if you're right, you'll agree..." Let's have a bit of fun with our dear girl before TPTB let us know what she really did with her summer vacation, shall we?[Originally posted on the More Than That fanfiction archive 2 June - 8 June 2008]
Relationships: Pam Beesly/Jim Halpert
Kudos: 11





	1. The First Month

She brings her suitcase and a small collection of necessities, limiting herself to what will fit in the back of Jim's car. As he drives, he looks in the rear view mirror at the copy paper boxes in his backseat and tells her that he'll be happy to bring anything she's forgotten, anything she decides that she needs. He did not offer to take her to Brooklyn and she did not ask. Pam sees their mutual assumption as yet another good sign. Her life has become an intricate collection of good signs.

When they arrive, he moves twice as fast as she does, barely letting her carry anything up to her apartment. He stays long enough to have dinner and watch her open a couple of boxes. She walks downstairs with him and they kiss on her front step for twenty minutes while the sun is going down. He tells her that he's proud of her, that he loves her, and that he'll come back as soon as he can. He says these things over and over. She thanks him without saying what for. She realizes that there's too much to list. He drives away and she does not cry. It doesn't occur to her that she should.

She is subletting from a young, married couple who have gone to Israel for the summer. Their pots and pans, dishes, silverware, and linens are gone; their closets are empty, but their wedding pictures are on the wall and their good china is in the cabinet in the hallway.

Quietly, Pam walks around the apartment, opening cabinets and peering in drawers, unable to shake the feeling that someone will walk through the door at any moment. She returns again and again to the wedding pictures, to their elaborate, handwritten marriage contract. They are about her and Jim's age, maybe younger. Pam unpacks her boxes, washes the newsprint off her dishes and pans and makes her bed. She takes a bath and then slips under the sheets. She hasn't slept alone in about three months, but it isn't that hard.

It takes Pam a week to realize that she is dressed all wrong. Her receptionist's clothes are too hot, uncomfortable, and fussy for her new, temporary life. Her nylons stick to her legs, allowing sweat and grime to accumulate around her ankles. She walks everywhere now and her shoes are uncomfortable. There's no room in her tiny apartment to lay things flat to dry. Her classmates dress in jeans, beat-up shoes, and ironic t-shirts. It makes her feel like their mother. It makes her remember that she's only 29 and she sees that she's been spending years trying to race toward being someone older, more put-together.

She goes to used clothing stores and hole-in-the-wall shops in Williamsburg and acquires a small collection of a-line skirts that fall freely to her knees. They're made of stiff cotton that she associates with kitchen curtains or soft jersey like old t-shirts. They have elastic waistbands and are dark colors with small, indistinct patterns, tiny lines or flowers the size of her pinky fingernail. She buys thin cotton t-shirts in solid colors, camisoles with bras built in, and, because she has never owned anything like them before, a couple of filmy t-shirts from the bin of a used shop, printed with the name of elementary school baseball teams from towns she has never heard of. She replaces her work shoes with soft-soled canvas flats and wears them with little white footie socks. Everything can go in the washing machine, the dryer. She feels cooler, more appropriate. Jim has given her one of his old canvas shoulderbags. Before the end of the first week in her new, old clothes, a couple of tourists stop her outside of her apartment and ask her for directions. She does a little dance by herself in the living room in celebration.

Her hair becomes a problem. It sticks to her neck and gets in her face so she goes to a salon down the street and has it cut, leaving only enough to make a small ponytail at the base of her neck. She sends Jim a text message from the salon chair - "Haircut. Consider yourself warned." She is too busy to think about her hair most of the time and stops wearing what little makeup she used to bother with. She feels clean, unencumbered, and in her proper place. She takes cool baths every night before she goes to bed. She reads a lot, listens to music all of the time. There's no television in the apartment.

She is at school 8, sometimes 10 hours a day. She works hard and is cordial with her classmates, but she doesn't really make friends with them. She feels too focused on the task at hand to bother figuring out how to negotiate the cliques springing up around her. It seems like they all come to know one another effortlessly. She feels a little too gawky, a little too loud in the classroom. She is ten years out of high school and is surprised at how much of that girl is still in her, intact and unchanged.

At the end of the first week, the day before she goes shopping for new clothes, a square, flat package addressed in Jim's neat handwriting arrives in her mailbox. There's a CD inside, labeled "Because You're in New York and Are Cooler Than Me." It's Spoon and Lou Reed and The Hold Steady and Elvis Costello and Patti Smith and Pavement and The Ronettes and The New Pornographers and Arcade Fire and he's definitely cooler than her. It's all she listens to for the next week.

Her introduction to her neighbors is a knock on her door the first Friday night she's there. When she answers, the old woman standing before her informs her that it's the Sabbath and that she should come to dinner. She finds herself sitting at Mrs. Chapsky's table, drinking iced tea, and eating bread baked in her tiny, overheated kitchen before the sun went down. She finishes two bowls of ice-cold, electric pink borscht with sour cream and thinks of Dwight. She emails him the following Monday morning to tell him that she does, in fact, like beets. She might even love them. She sends him Mrs. Chapsky's borscht recipe. He responds with a terse thank you and a p.s. thanking her for leaving for the summer. "Her boyfriend," he writes, is much more productive in her absence. Pam is fairly certain that Dwight misses her.

Because of Mrs. Chapsky, she meets Mrs. Rabinovich and Mrs. Farber. She is clearly their little diversion for the summer and she is glad. They fuss over her, feed her, and call her by her full first name. They coo over her sketches. She listens to their stories and, because they always look so deliciously cool, starts occasionally tying her hair back with a scarf like they do.

When they first meet her, the widows want to know what she's doing in the city alone. They want to know who her man is, the tall one she was kissing on the front step last week, where he is, and what he does with himself. She tells them his name. His surname earns an "oh" of approval from Mrs. Rabinovich. When she says that he's in Scranton, working, they approve, but he still shouldn't leave such a beautiful girl alone in the city. She tells them that he's a salesman and the solidness, the intelligence of his career choice is praised. But she shouldn't be alone.

He hasn't left her alone. He calls her every other day. He mails her Greetings from Scranton! postcards with notes like "Aren't you glad you aren't here?" scribbled on the back. He sends her poems and passages from books he is reading, copied down on Dunder-Mifflin stationery. They spend an afternoon IM'ing one another, trying to figure out how to use her absence from the office to Dwight's disadvantage.

She hasn't left him alone. She emails him multiple times a day, usually just weird single sentences, little sonar pings that all loosely translate as "I'm here. Are you there?" He always writes back within the hour. She sends him sketches and cellphone camera pictures of the things and people she has seen and the tackiest, most touristy postcards she can find. She tells him long stories on the phone about school and her collection of widows, how popular he is among them.

Because he has been given the job of fixing the things that Ryan has broken, it is three weeks before he finally makes it to the city to see her. He has been working weekends and decides that he has earned the right to leave work early one Thursday afternoon. He arrives just before sundown. She is sitting on the front step with Mrs. Chapsky, who is entirely unsubtle about her reasons for being there.

When Pam sees Jim coming down the street, recognizing his long gait before she can make out his face, she stands up, smooths her skirt, and takes off walking to meet him halfway down the block. He is beaming when his face comes into focus, laughing when he hugs her, lifts her up off the ground, and kisses her. He pulls gently on the shorn ends of her hair sticking out of her scarf, as if he could make unspool from her scalp. "Look at you," he says in a tone that makes her feel like a gift, "You look amazing."

She leans toward him in a confidential manner, "It's my New York City disguise. I seem to be fooling everyone. Shhh."

He kisses her again. "I love you, I love you, I love you."

After Jim has been thoroughly pinched and kissed by Mrs. Chapsky, they go up to Pam's apartment. He pulls her sweaty clothes off and doesn't stop saying that he loves her.

They go out that night, for Middle Eastern food, and to a stifling-hot club where Pam's clothes make sense and Jim looks like her frat-boy boyfriend. They see three bands and walk home hand in hand at 3 a.m., soaked with sweat, and shouting over the ringing in their ears. Pam is a little drunk, Jim a little moreso. On the spot, she decides to cut class the next morning and leads Jim to the bathtub. They barely fit, but they manage. Pam is between Jim's legs, resting against his chest. His hand is between her legs, his fingers making the water ripple against her thighs. She can hear his small smile when he murmurs "Comfortable?" near her ear. She is too distracted to do anything but nod.

The widows manage a group-effort Sabbath dinner the following night, where they all coo over Jim, refilling his plate twice. They're in Mrs. Farber's incredibly clean apartment. She asks Jim to say the blessing over the wine and Pam looks at him, alarmed. She only has a split-second to regret not better explaining things to her widows before he picks up the kiddush cup, holding it in his right hand, and says something quickly and clearly in Hebrew, stumbling a little over the last part. Pam hides her surprise behind her wineglass. Mrs. Rabinovich pats his knee.

Later that night, when they're lying naked on their stomachs across her borrowed bed, the radio quietly playing in the background, she finally asks, "How on earth...?"

He picks up his head a little. "It's just a formula. Always starts the same way," again, he says something in Hebrew. Pam can't make out the individual words. "It's pretty easy to remember. I heard it a lot when I was a kid."

"You are just full of surprises."

"Don't underestimate me, Pam," he tries to deadpan, but his mouth is turning up at the corners.

~~~~~

Sometime near the end of the first month, Ben, her hipster-cute, geeky classmate asks her out for dinner. "I'd love to, but I really can't. My fiance is coming into the city tonight." She doesn't know why she says it, but she doesn't regret it and it doesn't feel like a lie. She thinks that she could have called Jim her fiance, her husband, her best friend, or her brother and she still would have been telling the truth in a more socially appropriate manner than simply saying to Ben that she belonged to Jim, that he made everyone else seem far away and faded. When she talks to Jim on the phone that night, she tells him about Ben, but changes the story slightly, calls him her boyfriend. She doesn't regret it.


	2. The Second Month

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Notes as posted June 2008 on the More Than That fanfiction archive]
> 
> A number of things - first, and most importantly, thanks to all those who left such kind reviews. It means a lot to the new girl. Second, thanks to the creators of The Office for sending Pam to NYC for the summer, which, unlike Scranton, I have actually visited. To quote dear Jim, "Whew." Third, Pam's dress and the story surrounding it were stolen whole cloth from the touching vignette "Bottle Green" by Kate Andrews. I hope Kate doesn't mind my... extrapolation. Fourth, the restaurant described is not in New York, but I ate there last night. Jim would totally take Pam there, trust me. Fifth, oeufs a la neige is SO MUCH FUN to say. Sixth, the description of Pam and Jim's first night together is taken from a longer work that... I have not published yet. So, yeah. Prequel. Seventh, I'm not sure who brother Jonathan originally belonged to, but I love him. So I stole him, too. Eighth, vibrating pink bathtub ducks are available at Toys in Babeland. Oo la la!

She sends him links to the websites that she has designed and postcards from the museums that she has visited on class trips. He sends her a small gift-wrapped package, containing a pink bathtub duck wearing a feather boa, gazing up at her coyly from its nest of packing paper. She picks it up and discovers a small button on its underside. The duck hums in her palm. She blushes about it while she makes dinner and waits until she is certain that he is home, then she fills the bath and calls him.

He sends her flowers and Dwight's stapler. She photographs and sketches it in multiple places of interest around the city, using it as an excuse to visit landmarks that she hasn't seen since high school. After a week, she mails it back with an 'I [heart] NY' sticker attached. Instead of a scolding email, Dwight sends her a canister of pepper-spray. There is a note enclosed expressing concerns for her safety. Pam is absolutely certain that Dwight misses her.

She can feel some sort of small, tectonic shift occurring in her brain. It has been barely more than a month, but it's getting easier to engage with her own ideas. She finds that she actually has ideas. On the weekends that Jim doesn't visit, she goes to museums and wanders around slowly, wondering what her relationship is to the things she sees. She doesn't know what she wants to do with everything she is learning, but she's starting to believe that it doesn't matter, not yet. Pam begins racking up As on her assignments, begins to perceive her own strengths and weaknesses. She's the student who either won't or can't keep her hand down during discussion. A couple of her classmates begin asking her how she is approaching assignments and crane their necks when they walk past her workspace. She goes out for coffee with a handful of them a couple of times and enjoys their company, but realizes that she's not quite sure what to say to them.

Two more mix cds arrive three days before Jim's next visit, which is three weeks after his first - The "Let's Murder Andy Bernard" mix (The Clash, The Pogues, Hole, Prodigy) and The "I Am So Going to Tear Your Clothes off When I See You This Weekend" mix (Portishead, Feist, Radiohead, Al Green). She takes the hint and immediately knows what's coming. She spends the rest of the week attempting to control her excitement, rushing through class, unable to focus. She doesn't want him to be able to see it on her face when he arrives. She doesn't want to be wrong.

Jim knocks on her door on Friday evening in a shirt and tie that she doesn't recognize. His overnight bag and one of her dresses are slung over his shoulder. It's a bottle-green halter neck that had been purchased years ago, a souvenir of an afternoon they spent together at the outlet mall. Pam pictures him standing in front of her closet and wonders if he opened the door knowing what he was looking for or if he had to sort through her clothes, testing fabrics between his fingers, picturing her in the dresses hanging in front of him. He's taking her someplace nice, he explains, handing her the dress, and he has always loved this on her. She isn't wrong. She can see it on his face and everywhere else. He has tried to make his hair lay neatly. He's wearing cuff-links. She wants to tease him, to raise her eyebrows at him as if they're about to execute a particularly well-constructed prank. But Jim looks sweaty and just a little wide-eyed, so she chooses instead to play her part. She has, after all, done this before, and he has not. She feels a little bit sorry for him. He helps her tie the neck of her dress, just like he did the day he bought it for her, crowded into that tiny fitting room together, years before he should have been buying her something so beautiful and touching her like that. She knows now that she was frightened that afternoon because she could see this night from there, but she wasn't sure how they would manage to cover the distance.

They take a cab into Manhattan, where he has reservations at a French cafe she saw mentioned in the Times a couple of weeks earlier. It is a warmly lit, open room with faded red walls and tightly arranged tables. It feels either very old or very new, she cannot decide. The people next to them are eating snails out of a white, ceramic, compartmentalized dish. She smells garlic and butter. Jim dares her, but she orders a salad to start. The waiter makes her feel at ease and outclassed at the same time. She loves it. He traps one of her feet between his and tells her that he got a phone call from Wallace earlier that week, informing him that he'd be receiving a bonus for all of the work he had done and done well to smooth over Ryan's mess. He is playing with her left hand while he speaks. He says, "It's a lot - a lot - of money," but she doesn't ask how much. He'll tell her eventually. She congratulates him and says he deserves it. He lowers his head and says, "So, yeah, we're celebrating tonight." There is something decisive and adult in his voice that she's not very familiar with.

They toast each other and eat way too much. He tells her to choose dessert so he can listen to her deploy her high school French again - oeufs a la neige. He makes her say it again while he takes an experimental sip of the digestif she ordered for him. She leaves the restaurant on his arm, a little wobbly from the wine, and the warm summer air wraps around her. He suggests that they walk for a while, since the evening is so nice. He's avoiding her eyes, trying to be casual. She isn't wrong. She can't tell if it's dinner or anticipation that's making her feel a little ill, but she wants to stop in the middle of 5th Avenue as they cross to the Central Park side and tell him that she knows, that he shouldn't look so terrified. They end up walking up 5th, and, when they come to the Met, he leads her up the stairs. They lean against the base of the pillars for a while, kissing. He pulls away and rests his forehead against hers. "I suck at subtle, huh?"

"Thank God."

He laughs and strokes her hair. "Yeah. So, uh, I have a plan -"

She can't help herself. She interrupts him, "clearly."

His hand leaves her hair, reaches into his pants pocket. Jim speaks at a volume meant for her ears only. "I love you. I miss you. Let's live together. Marry me." He opens a small black velvet box between them.

She doesn't hear herself say yes, doesn't hear that she says it five times. He puts the ring on her finger and he's shaking. She tells him that he's adorable. She wraps her arms around him and he sighs against her hair. "Whew."

She holds him for a moment before saying, "Would it be tacky of me to say that I really want to look at my ring? I kind of blacked out and didn't see it."

He lets her go. "No! No. Look at your ring! Let me tell you about your ring. I've been dying to tell you the story." They lean against the base of the pillars again and she holds her hand out in front of her.

The band is wider and platinum. The diamond is gorgeous. It shines, but it looks like an antique. "The story?"

"You should probably know how demented I am before we start sending out save-the-date cards and stealing more boxes from work." He's joking, but Pam can hear the embarrassment in his voice. "Do you remember the first night we spent together?"

She remembers his shaking hands, the blush that wouldn't leave his cheeks, the way she laughed at him when he teased her, trying to convince her that he was a virgin to distract her from her anxiety about her own lack of experience. "Are you saying I come off slutty?" His voice was mock-hurt. She could barely concentrate on anything beyond how strange it was that she was straddling his hips and she could feel him pressing against her, hot and solid. "Of course I remember."

"And you went out shopping with your mom the next day? We had dinner with your parents?"

Her mother had called when she was still in Jim's bed, naked and warm, planning to spend the day working past their needless fear. She hadn't been able to look at him while she talked to her mother, had only been able to think of the noise he made when he came. She has since heard countless variations on that surprisingly soft sound that seems to hide somewhere low in his throat, but she remembers how it sounded when they were brand new and her stomach drops. "Right."

"That's when I bought your ring. While you were out. You actually called me when I was at the store, trying to make up my mind."

"That was a week after our first date."

The stone is cool against her back and his hand is warm on her arm. "It was. But, really, it was because I watched you get out of my bed that morning and you were so beautiful and you were so" Jim closes his eyes for a second. Pam wonders what he sees. " - amazing - the night before. I wanted to marry you years before that morning, but that was the first time that I thought it could actually happen. I was so happy." He corrects himself, "I am so happy."

Pam is surprised, almost embarrassed, by Jim's ardor. She doesn't know what she has done to be the object of such affection. "Wow."

"I didn't want to freak you out, so I bought the ring and decided to wait until - well, until it seemed like it was time." He lets out a breath. "So that's the story of your ring."

"That's a good story."

"I think so, too."

When they get to her apartment, he backs her into the bedroom and bends her over the mattress while she's still in her dress. He seems to be looking for the middle ground between aggressive and tender, teasing slaps on her ass and soft kisses on the back of her neck, pulled hair and whispers, working through the nervousness that's been pressing them down all evening. She steadies herself on her elbows, pressing her fingers into the slick sheet, and begs him for more. It's the fantastic opposite of how formal they've been with one another since he arrived.

They end up in the bathtub again, where he finds the seductive pink duck nesting in the soap catch. Pam just giggles when he kisses her temple and seeks assurance that her friend can breathe underwater. Jim holds Pam close and her moans echo wetly against the tiles. They stay in the water for a while and he holds her left hand, looking at her ring. In bed, they counter how frantic they had been earlier with something slower, sweeter, and more careful. He keeps playing with her ring, linking his fingers with hers. They decide to get married in November. Pam convinces him that they can plan the kind of wedding they want in four months, even though she doubts it herself. She doesn't want to wait and neither does he.

On Saturday morning, Mrs. Rabinovich comes knocking, insisting that she's taking Jim to temple with her. "When was the last time you went?" she wants to know and, when he has to pause before he can answer, she orders him to put on a nice shirt and says, "Pamela, you come, too. Cover your hair and your arms."

It is oppressively hot and overbright outside. Pam's bedroom is cool and dark. She hadn't planned on leaving it. She pushes up the sleeves on her cardigan and Mrs. Rabinovich notices the ring. They have to stop in the middle of the sidewalk so she can kiss both of them repeatedly and tell them how beautiful marriage is. She wants to know when the wedding is, where it is, and when Jim proposed. She is still congratulating them when they get to the synagogue and she sends Jim through the men's entrance. Pam spends the service struggling to follow along while looking at the back of Jim's head and memorizing things that she will sketch when they get home. She twists her ring around her finger the entire time, her old habit. She finds herself thinking about Roy, noting how different this feels already.

Later that afternoon, after politely excusing themselves from tea at Mrs. Rabinovich's, Jim is sprawled across her bed, wearing only boxer shorts, searching for apartments on her laptop. He asks how many bedrooms they should have and if she wants to get a dog or have a garden.

They call their parents. Pam announces that they're getting married in November and she can hear her mother's blood pressure go up when she says it. Mrs. Beesly starts listing things that need doing, people she needs to call, and Pam interrupts her, saying, "It's okay, Mom. I'm not doing this alone this time."

Jim calls his brothers. Pam laughs when she hears Jonathan shout "God, you jackass, finally!" at Jim. He tries to negotiate some sort of best man signing bonus and Jim threatens to give someone else the job. Jim passes the phone to Pam. When she says "hello," Jon warmly replies, "hey, little sister, you sure about this?"

Pam takes out one of her notebooks and starts making a guest list. They order food in and debate the relative merits of a DJ and Scrantonicity II. She tells him that she requires a decent bathtub and balcony. He tells her that he knows. Of course.

He has made a dozen phone calls by the time he leaves on Sunday afternoon and she has five pages of lists. This time, when they kiss on her front step, she cries. He nods when he sees the tears in her eyes and quietly says, "Six more weeks."

She sniffs and wipes her face. "Halfway there," she replies.


	3. The Third Month

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Notes as posted on the More Than That fanfiction archive in June of 2008]
> 
> This is it, everyone. Thank you again for all of your kind feedback and enthusiasm. In the notes for the previous chapter, I mentioned that I'm working on a prequel of sorts to this one. It needs a bit of work and general tidying, but I hope to have it up sometime next week.

Pam gets an A on a project in her animation class for a short film of a stapler doing graceful pirouettes in a deserted Times Square. It's August and she is increasingly distracted by the idea of going home, wherever that might be. She signs up for a new email account - pmhalpert - and uses it to write to Jim. He responds to her first message by writing that he does not know anyone by that name and telling her to have a nice day. He calls her ma'am. She writes that she hates him. He sends digital photographs of the apartments he has gone to view and absurd character sketches of the various landlords he has spoken with. On the phone, he keeps telling her that he's doing a terrible job finding a place for them and she keeps telling him that she trusts him.

A week after he proposes, Jim is back in the city on a Tuesday, meeting with Wallace, a number of major clients, and some nice men from the government. Jim tells Pam that it's the last meeting he'll have to attend because of Ryan, that he's done everything he can to make amends for the temp's errors. He told David about their engagement and explained that he's going to need his weekends and his evenings back for a while. Wallace congratulated him and said he'd earned some extra vacation time if he needed it. Pam receives flowers and a card from corporate the next day, congratulating her on her success in school and her recent engagement.

The brides' attendants will wear dark red, the groomsmen ties to match. They decide to sell his couch on Craigslist and keep hers. The bride will be in ivory, the groom in a black suit and an ivory tie. Jim asks the guys in the warehouse not to break down empty boxes. He takes them to his apartment, to hers. The women will carry yellow mums, except for the bride, who will carry red roses and yellow mums. Pam writes a letter to Margaret, announcing her intention to vacate at the end of the month. Simultaneous wedding planning and apartment hunting inspires another mix cd - the "Have We Lost Our Fucking Minds?" mix (Tricky, Beck, M.I.A, more Radiohead, Tori Amos). pmhalpert writes - "probably."

After a couple of weeks of phone calls and making deposits, Jim steals a stack of ivory cardstock and runs off 100 small save-the-date notices with dark red clip art leaves in the top right corner. He sends one to her in the mail. Ms. Pamela Beesly and Mr. James Halpert are pleased to announce... A formal invitation will follow, when he can steal more cardstock and envelopes to bring to his fiancee, who, at this point, knows a thing or two about basic design principles and has access to really nice, high-speed printers. Pam can picture the circuit Jim made through the office, handing out cards, getting handshakes.

Phyllis writes first, warm and congratulatory. A series of three, increasingly frantic emails from Michael arrive next, the first implying that she is pregnant, the second apologizing for suggesting that "Jim had planted his seed," and the last full of animated wedding bells and glitter letters that make her browser crash. Oscar and Kevin send her messages fifteen minutes apart, Oscar saying that he will mark it on his calendar and Kevin with a link to Scrantonicity II's Myspace page. Kelly manages to mention Darryl three times in her email and omg, wants to see Pam's ring right away. Is it huge? Is it pretty? Finally, Angela and Dwight write at nearly the exact same time. It makes Pam worry about both of them for a small moment. Jim is useless for the kind of information she requires. She almost wishes the cameramen were there - she'd call one of them.

During her last month away, she and Jim see each other every week. He is back to working normal hours and she is working fast during the week to make time for him. She feels small stabs of guilt, knowing that she's not applying herself as she could be, but she cannot keep her mind in the present. Her grades stay high, but she takes to sketching for her own amusement, like she's daydreaming, drawings that she never shows anyone, not even Jim. They're deeply personal, like a diary, and kept separate in a small book she carries with her in Jim's canvas bag.

Mostly, he comes to her, but she takes a bus back to Scranton one Friday afternoon and sees Jim's three favorite rentals on Saturday morning - two apartments and a small house. They walk through all of them, trailed by eager landlords. In the end, because it has a yard and a tiny deck off of the master bedroom, the house wins. They embrace snow shoveling and lawn care. They sign a lease and Jim writes a check. She tells him that she wants to pay half and he tells her no. When she protests, he mentions the bonus and says, "it's not my money, anyway, it's our money."

As significant, useful chunks of her apartment are in Brooklyn, they spend the weekend at Jim's place. They go for a walk around his neighborhood after he cooks dinner for her and she studies. She's wearing some of the clothes she bought in the city, which feel strange out of context. They go to bed early, watch a movie, and make love. They end up talking until one a.m., the conversation moving in comfortable circles until, somehow, Pam is asking Jim what he wants to do.

He shrugs, seems a little bothered by her question. "Marry you."

"But - I mean - for a living."

His voice is blank. "I have no idea." He props himself up on his side. "I just want to take care of you. That makes me happy. It's enough for now."

She's flattered, but it troubles her. She wants him to be as excited and engaged as she is. She tries again, "We'll figure it out."

"Sure we will," he kisses her, "but you figured it out first, so it's your turn right now. I'll be a corporate whore, you take the art world by storm, okay?"

"Yes, shaking the very foundations of the New York gallery scene with my shocking flip-books of dancing office supplies."

"Hey, I liked them. The coffee cup looked really joyful."

She wakes up early the next morning, thinking about the assignments that are due that week. The models in her figure drawing class elude and frustrate her, so she sketches Jim while he is sleeping, the sheet low enough that she can see where the line of hair that starts below his navel ends, one leg kicked free, his right arm over his head. His face is turned slightly away, but not so far that she can't draw the way he pouts a little in his sleep, furrows his brow. He flips through her sketchbook later and says, bashfully, "I don't look like that." She bumps his shoulder with hers and replies, "Yeah. You do."

Mrs. Farber throws her an engagement party when Pam returns from Scranton on Sunday evening. Mrs. Rabinovich and Mrs. Chapsky also attend. They have sandwiches, tea, and a honey cake and Pam describes the wedding, their new home. She tears up when each woman presents her with a gift - a kiddush cup from Mrs. Farber, a tablecloth from Mrs. Rabinovich, and handkerchiefs with delicate blue lace edges from Mrs. Chapsky. She writes to Jim that night and asks him for more save-the-date cards.

She turns in a series of six drawings of him and earns a A- for not using the classroom models. She draws his hands, the back of his head, his feet, the long line of him standing in the tiny shower in her sublet with his back to her. The final one makes him flush crimson and call himself skinny.

One evening, she turns up the stereo and steps into the bathroom, standing naked in front of the only full-length mirror in the apartment. She's listening to the same Fiona Apple album she's been listening to two or three times a week since she stole it from Jim in May. She wiggles her hips to the music a little while she studies herself, eyes narrowed. She turns around, looks over her shoulder, and sings along absently. It's the hottest day of the year so far. Taking her book and pencil off the counter, she tries to draw herself, frizzy hair, sweat between her breasts, a thumb-shaped bruise on her thigh, small feet, and thinner from walking everywhere but still rounder, fuller than Jim's simple angles. It never looks quite right. She can't quite perceive her own curves, doesn't know what to do about her eyes. After an hour, she starts the CD over and gets into the bath. She still has some things to learn. It doesn't bother her.

~~~~~

Pam moves twice in one day. She packs her boxes, her new and old clothes, her art supplies. She's going home with two large portfolios full of work, a box of wedding invitations made on the sly three days prior, and two official copies of a transcript with a 4.0 at the bottom. She leaves a thank-you note for the couple who own her apartment and a rendering of one of their wedding pictures done in pastels, her attempt to capture the motion and the love that radiates out of their photograph. She's pleased with it.

The widows follow her and Jim down the front steps at seven o'clock on the Saturday morning that she leaves. The heat is coming off of the sidewalk in waves. They all hug her and cry, promising that they'll be at the wedding in November. After Jim places the last box in the car, it is his turn to be hugged and cried over. Pam slips away, locks the door that is no longer hers, and stands in the hallway for a moment before sliding the keys under the door. She takes the stairs down, rescues Jim from a three-pronged lecture on being a good husband, and they get in the car. Pam leans out the window and waves as Jim pulls away from the curb.

It's two hours to Scranton and the first stop is their house. They add her boxes to the collections in the living room, the kitchen, the bedroom. Jim slept here last night with his brothers, having emptied his apartment during the day. She drives Jim's car and he drives the rental truck he's had since yesterday. Jonathan and Joshua are at her apartment, drinking coffee, waiting to haul furniture. She kisses both of them. She packs boxes, emptying bookshelves and cabinets. Jim and his brothers move her furniture out to the truck while she places clothes, plants, paintings, and bedding in the back of Jim's car. They're able to get everything in one trip, Jim and Jon in the rental, Josh driving Jim's car, Pam driving hers.

They load everything into the house and survey the task before them. Jim orders his brothers around, rearranging boxes until the furniture can be put in its proper place. Pam starts on the bathrooms, then the kitchen. With Josh's help, she carries all of her work and her supplies into the spare bedroom that Jim quietly insists on referring to as "your studio." She and Jim set up her bed - their bed - together and roll their eyes when Jon asks if they've had a chance to "christen" the place yet. Pam places the pillows on the bed while Jim takes off down the hall after his brother, who is, with a safe head start, asking how their sex life is, anyway. The last thing Pam hears before the back door slams is, "What? Jim, you're getting married. It's time I explained some things about women to you. The clitoris is -" A moment later, there is an indignant yell in the backyard. Pam steps into the living room. Josh is on the floor rummaging through a box of her books. He looks up, shrugs, and smiles at her.

The four of them sit in the half-assembled kitchen that night, eating Chinese takeout at the table that Pam has covered with Mrs. Rabinovich's cloth. Afterward, they listen to music, have a few beers, and talk. Jon and Josh sleep in the spare room, negotiating some sort of arrangement regarding Jim's bed - the guest bed. After showering, Pam pads down the hall to her - their - new bedroom, where Jim is waiting, looking out the window on the backyard, clean and slightly buzzed. He draws the curtain and pulls off the towel she has wrapped around herself, and murmurs, "God, I'm exhausted." He kisses her sternum and covers her breasts with his hands.

"Me, too."

"Here, come here." He draws her down to the bed, glances in the direction of the spare bedroom, and says, "shh."

They're lying on their sides, facing each other. She chuckles against his mouth. The alcohol, her sleepiness, and his nearness have left her warm, aroused. "I think it would make Jon feel better about your - skillset - if we made a big racket."

"Eh, why give him the satisfaction?" He kisses her and lifts one of her legs over his hip. "No. Just - quiet. Slow." She kisses her agreement.

~~~~

They have a long weekend between Pam's return from Brooklyn and her first day back at work. It is spent unpacking boxes and grinning like fools every time they say things like "Put that in our bedroom, okay?" They're very nearly settled in by the time they go to bed on Monday night.

She wears one of her cotton skirts and leaves her legs bare. When she walks through the door at the office, Jim's hand on her lower back, Michael crushes her in a hug almost immediately. He might be crying, but she backs away too quickly to be certain. The cameramen are hovering nearby. There are daffodils on her desk. Angela gives her a tiny handshake and a tight smile. Dwight approaches her abruptly, stares at her for a moment, and says, "The temp that they hired to replace you this summer was incompetent." Pam smiles at him and the corners of his mouth twitch, just once. Kevin greets her by calling her "Mrs. Halpert" and giggling. She decides on the spot that they're hiring a DJ.

The Party Planning Committee, which, oddly, Phyllis now seems to be running, welcomes her back in style, with a coffee cake, muffins, and a banner in the conference room. No one gets much work done that morning. Pam shows everyone her stapler film using the LCD projector. She is extracted from the party by Kelly, who drags Pam back to the annex by her ring finger and makes her describe how Jim proposed. When she finishes the story, Kelly swoons back against Oscar's chair and says, "He's totally hot, you know. Don't tell Darryl I said that. But he's totally hot. Like goofy and geeky and you'd never expect it, but if you think about it a little, you're, like, sure he knows how to mess. you. up. He does, right?" Pam hesitates a bit too long before replying and Kelly claps her hands, eyes shining.

Oscar asks to see some more of the work she did over the summer, so Pam hands over her sketchbook. He and Phyllis look at it during lunch and Phyllis returns it to Pam while Jim is leaning on the reception desk. Jim takes the book from her. Phyllis, who looks slightly more alarmed than usual, says, "They're really beautiful, but there's some stuff near the back that you might want to take out" and gives Jim a strange, lingering look. When she walks away, Jim flips to the back of the book and finds the rough versions of her Sunday morning sketches.

He turns to her, eyes wide, and she shrugs, meekly says, "you're wearing a sheet."

Later, when Oscar comes up to send a fax, he leans into Pam and says in a low voice, "Very, very nice." She and Oscar both look over at Jim, who glances over, then turns away quickly.

She waits for Jim to finish making some calls at the end of the day. When they leave together at 5:15, she's smiling. She's surprised how glad she is to be back and how easy it is to be there, perhaps because she knows now that she is something other than this and that it won't be forever.

~~~~~

That night, they are lying in bed. It's hot outside, but not Brooklyn hot. A humid breeze seeps through the screen door leading to the deck. She pictures window boxes hanging from the railings. Jim has his arm around her waist, fingertips stroking her bare hip. He has settled his face into the curve where her neck meets her shoulder and is suggesting, in jest, that they elope. He is kissing her neck, slowly, to punctuate and bolster his argument. "No, I want to dance with Dwight at our reception," she counters, drawing circles on his shoulder. He laughs and bites her gently, saying something about a beach in Puerto Rico.

She feels incredibly free.


End file.
